Awards will be announced on their website on February 22 in 10 categories, as well as in nine special categories for career achievement and manuscripts. However, winners of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature will be announced live on March 27 at the 2017 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony, which will be held at The New School’s John L. Tishman Auditorium in Manhattan.

With the addition of four new prizes, this year’s awards will be the largest ever, conferring nearly $315,000 to writers and translators spanning the fields of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, translation, and more.

Finalists in the Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction include Clare Beams for We Show What We Have Learned, Brit Bennett for The Mothers, and Yaa Gyasi for Homecoming. The judges in this category are Jami Attenberg, Tanwi Nandini Islam, Randall Kenan, Hanna Pyalvainen, and Akhil Sharma.

The short list for the PEN Open Book Award, to recognize an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color, includes Petina Gappah for The Book of Memory, Helen Oyeyemi for What is Not Yours is Not Yours: Stories, Solmaz Sharif for Look: Poems, and Monica Youn for Blackacre: Poems. The judges are Ishmael Beah, Major Jackson, and Bich Minh (Beth) Nguyen.

PEN America also gives out awards in several categories in which there are no finalists, such as the Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, the Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and the Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry to recognize an emerging American poet.

PEN American Center is the U.S. branch of the world’s leading international literary and human rights organization. PEN International was founded in 1921 in direct response to the ethnic and national divisions that contributed to the First World War. PEN American Center was founded in 1922 and is the largest of the 144 PEN centers in 101 countries that together comprise PEN International.

PEN America, based in New York City, has begun announcing the longlists of nominees for its 2017 Literary Awards. The awards are given out in a wide range of categories: debut fiction, general nonfiction, essays, biography, poetry, sports writing, lifetime achievement in literary sports writing, science, fiction and poetry in translation, drama (master dramatist, mid-career playwright, emerging playwright), emerging writers (awarded to 12 writers of short stories), the open book award (a full-length work by a writer of color), literary magazine editor, and a translation fund grant.

Nominees in four categories were announced on Dec. 5. The longlists in the other categories will be announced Dec. 7-9.

The finalists will be revealed on January 17, with winners to be announced on February 22. The awards ceremony is scheduled for March 27 at the New School in New York City. (Four winners will not be announced until the awards ceremony: debut fiction, essay, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature.)

The ten nominees for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction include seven women:

Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott

We Show What We Have Learned by Clare Beams

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang

When Watched: Stories by Leopoldine Core

Hide by Matthew Griffin

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss

Hurt People by Cote Smith

Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennart-Moore

The ten nominees for the PEN Open Book Award include eight women:

Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett

Chronicle of a Last Summer: A Novel of Egypt by Yasmine El Rashidi

The Book of Memory by Petina Gappah

The Big Book of Exit Strategies by Jamaal May

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours: Stories by Helen Oyeyemi

Look (poetry) by Solmaz Sharif

Problems by Jade Sharma

Cannibal (poetry) by Safiya Sinclair

Blackacre (poetry) by Monica Youn

Four of the ten nominees for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award are female:

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel

The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish by Emily Voigt